Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/377

Rh festive occasions, and a considerable trade has been developed in flowers for such uses. Favorite kinds for this purpose are the Odontoglossums, with handsome white, starry flowers, and the Oncidium papilio, with its butterfly-shaped corolla.

The enormous sums that are often paid for orchids are decried as foolish, and the extravagance is sometimes compared with the craze that once raged about tulips. The two fashions are not to be compared; for there is something real and solid about orchids, which will always give them rank among the finest and most highly esteemed flowers; while tulips are not fine, and soon suffered a loss of the extravagant admiration that prevailed for them for a time. New varieties of the rose, although it is a very old flower, still bring higher prices than the rarest of orchids.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.

point of great interest observed by Dr. Hansen in his expedition across Greenland was the very low temperature in the interior, which seems to be in departure from the received meteorological laws. This may, he thinks, throw a good deal of light on the much-discussed question of the cause of the great cold of the Glacial period. No better place can be found for the pursuit of this inquiry than Greenland.